Misty-eyed viewers could be forgiven for thinking that Sunday night’s Turnbull v Shorten TV bout was a dud affair.

Round after round, without anyone getting knocked out, not even a black eye – which is inexcusable.

When it came to the “security of our borders” it was a particularly miserable experience, with the usual bloviated cacophony about the business model of people smugglers or, in Billion Dollar Bill’s case, “criminal syndicates”.

It was unclear what the contenders are proposing to do with the nearly 1500 people imprisoned onshore and nearly the same number in offshore camps, or, as former Victorian Supreme Court judge Stephen Charles called them, “concentration camps”.

Implicitly, the policy of the Coalition is to merrily continue the regime of suicides, self-harm, assaults, rapes, immolations and mental destruction, under the supervisory care of the odious Mr (Outstanding) Dutton, until such time as the prisoners give up and agree to return to their home countries, where more persecution awaits.

It’s no more than a scheme of self-induced refoulement, which, whatever way you look at it, defies human decency.

Perhaps inspired by the success of the Australia to Cambodia refugee export scheme, Shorten’s solution is to send his immigration minister to see the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and work out a regional resettlement program. It’s a brilliant idea, were it not for the fact that the region is already bursting with its own refugee problems: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, in fact everywhere you look in the neighbourhood.

As one of the fearsome interlocutors noted on Sunday night, even Little Winston Howard allowed boat people to come back into Australia after processing.

All white: Arfur’s theme confirmed

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Helen Pringle from the University of New South Wales put to rest Gadfly’s uncertainty about whether Arfur Calwell, Ben Chifley’s immigration minister from 1945 to 1949, actually said “two Wongs don’t make a white”.

He did, and Hansard from December 2, 1947, shows the minister setting the tone for much of our current policy: “The government has decided that all persons who came to Australia as evacuees or refugees during the war and who are not eligible to become permanent residents of this country must leave. We have been very tolerant of these people ... In all, 15,000 evacuees of all nationalities came to Australia during the war. Of that number, 4400 were Asiatics. Most of the evacuees, including the Asiatics, have gone.”

Calwell added that there had been protests about the repatriation of Malays, “from a number of very reputable people, particularly in Sydney, on emotional and sentimental grounds”.

Yes, there were misty-eyed inner-city types, even in those times.

Arfur also referred to “a Chinese” who had been here 20 years, so therefore could not have been a wartime refugee, so his certificate might be “extended from time to time”.

“The gentleman’s name is Wong. There are many Wongs in the Chinese community, but I have to say – and I am sure that the honourable member for Balaclava [Thomas White] will not mind me doing so – that, ‘two Wongs do not make a White’.”

Outstanding.

Smiles from nowhere

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By now the prime ministerial cheeks must be aching with pain. The man whose party leads him has been told to throw the switch to sunshine and to “keep smiling” regardless of the dizzying number of meet and greets with orbiting factory workers or potato farmers.

Journalist Andrew Clark in The Australian Financial Review reports that the pro-smiling advice came from Liberal insider and pal of the PM Michael Yabsley, who recently hosted Turnbull at the “Wombat Hollow” event where Tories in checked shirts and blazers turned out to see the PM perform his “exciting era” routine. Yabbers says Turnbull can be, “totally remote and very rude … He’s got a short fuse. Many people have experienced that. When he decided to go into politics he knew they were personality traits he had to get rid of … Malcolm’s answer was just to be emotionally passive in whatever circumstances. I have said to him to ‘keep smiling’.”

It must be excruciating for someone who just wants to chuck tantrums.

Beware the Brainy debate

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The IPA brotherhood continues to churn out free copy to fill up the yawning spaces in the Fin Review, created by the mass retrenchments of people who actually had some idea what they were talking about.

Wednesday’s opinion piece from IPA dreamweaver Simon Breheny was a masterpiece of contortion. His thinking ran along these lines:

Companies have the power to hire and fire “whomever they like”. This is good. But Bell Potter firing Angus Aitken raises concerns about “the future of robust debate in Australia”. This could be bad because debate is good, although debate by corporates on social issues with which Brainy disagrees is bad. For example, what’s Telstra doing supporting marriage equality and what about Qantas’s support for constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders? Corporate advocacy of “social engineering” is definitely bad.

So robust debate, which is selectively good, should not get in the way of “maximising profit” or of the right to sack people, which is always good.

I find that a sensible way through life is to try to locate whatever the IPA is attempting to say and then come to precisely the opposite point of view.

Fluffing the lines

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There’s one person definitely in need of a pay rise from the Fin Review, and that’s the hilarious Rowan Dean, a fluffy-haired former director of TV commercials who scribbles a column for the paper.

Last week’s contribution illustrates that the one-time advertising auteur is an absolute hoot. He handed out his 2016 “Poor Me” awards, compiled “exclusively from among the wealthiest or most celebrated individuals in Australia who, despite their great fortune and good luck, still bleat on about how hard done by they are”.

There were seven finalists, including “Sheik Waleed Logy, Adam Baddes, Stan ‘Don’t-take-me-for’ Granted, and Nova Peris-Backbone” – all citizens of colour and all receiving a good old whack from Mr Fluffy because of problems associated with not being more white.

Three other contestants were white, but they too were whingers: “Brigadier-General David Morriscorn, Jane Carob and Julia ‘La’ Grillard”.

Rheumy, retired stockbrokers on Sydney’s north shore and in Melbourne’s Malvern were wheezing with delight at Fluffs’ merciless skewering.

The fact that it was tasteless, creepy, cringeworthy and bigoted is completely beside the point.

Bookshelves gets in on the circuit act

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Bookshelves Brandis has been eerily quiet during the election campaign and there has been much speculation that he’d been hidden under a stormwater grate, as was the case during one particular episode at university. However, my field agent in northern Tasmania spotted him this week at the farewell ceremony for retiring Federal Circuit Court judge Stuart Roberts, who has hung up his wig after 16 years.

Bookshelves arranged for Roberts’ replacement during the election campaign by getting the chief judge of the court, John Pascoe, to pull Judge Terence McGuire out of Melbourne and send him to Launceston.

As we have noted before, this was mightily pleasing to the Liberal member for Bass, Field Marshal Andrew Nikolic, who was worried that his constituents would experience delays in purchasing their divorces.

Blow me down if Bookshelves didn’t turn up for Judge Roberts’ farewell ceremony and make what attendees thought were inappropriate political remarks in the court, particularly by lavishing praise on the Field Marshal for his brilliant lobbying to get the judicial vacancy filled at this vital time.

To the inward groans of the assembled big-wigs the attorney mentioned two or three times that Judge McGuire was only appointed because of Nikolic’s brilliance as a local member.

Knowing that Roberts was retiring, it’s a mystery that Brandis didn’t appoint a new judge to the Launceston post prior to the caretaker period. Anyway, the A-G told the court that Judge McGuire was “born and bred” in Launceston and that this makes the appointment all the more wonderful and auspicious, blah, blah, blah.

Minor problem – Judge Terry McGuire was born and bred in Devonport. No matter – close enough is good enough for old Shelves.

Karen Middleton
An audit report covering Scott Morrison’s role in the New Zealand tourism office raises serious concerns over transparency and due process.The NZ auditor’s criticisms of Morrison are similar to some of those the Australian National Audit Office would make nine years later in its own report examining the management of Tourism Australia.

Charis Palmer
As the government pushes to legislate for control of energy prices, retailers blame poor policy for rising bills. Meanwhile, experts say, the market continues to be gamed by energy generators.

Ella Donald Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn developed a taste for the macabre at an early age, but she’s keen to dispel the myth that she is who she writes. She talks about her depictions of deeply disturbed and disturbing women and the release of her latest film project, Widows. “There’s a reason we’re fascinated with domestic-based murders. It allows us to talk about marriage and family and what goes on behind closed doors. It gives us a strange vocabulary and permission to talk about those things we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Dylan Voller
If we didn’t riot, if we didn’t bring attention to the situation that way, all of these abuses would still be hidden out of sight. No one would know what goes on in Don Dale. Ultimately, we need all youth detention centres shut down and resources and power given to Aboriginal community leaders to develop alternative programs and facilities based on country, to help children who are caught up in violence and trauma to heal.

Paul Bongiorno
The question dogging Scott Morrison as he rubs shoulders with world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Port Moresby this weekend is how long he will remain a member of this exclusive club. By his own admission, the chances are slim. The accidental prime minister – catapulted into the job when a majority of the Liberal Party room 12 weeks ago preferred him over Peter Dutton – is failing miserably.

If you take out all the pages from The Sydney Morning Herald reporting on allegations of inappropriate touching there wouldn’t be enough newsprint to wrap a flounder. The latest revelation is that while the ABC board was at Billy Kwong’s, tucking into the saltbush cakes and crispy skin duck with Davidson’s plums, the then managing director’s back allegedly got rubbed, ickily. Litigation regarding this sort of thing is rampant.

The euphemism in the documents calls the grants “departmental approaches”. Everywhere else in Indigenous affairs, the money has to be begged; here, it is given freely. Possibly because here it can be used to fight Indigenous interests. By Nigel Scullion’s own admission, the money was for “legal fees, effectively … to put forward a case of detriment to the land commissioner”. That is, to object to native title claims.

Celina Ribeiro
The NSW government’s plan to make it easier to adopt children in out-of-home care has been criticised for not allowing sufficient time for parents to restore their families and for potentially creating a new Stolen Generation.

Hamish McDonald
Scott Morrison and Xi Jinping take on international diplomacy in the Pacific. Beijing boosting regional security, not military. South-west Pacific in political turmoil. ‘Soft power’ review under way as case made for Radio Australia’s return.

Sophie Quick
At the KidZania labour-themed fun park in Singapore, children earn pretend money working pretend jobs as insurance agents or pharmacists, while their parents stand in depressingly familiar queues.

Richard Cooke
As she competes in the ICC Women’s World Twenty20, Australian cricketer Sophie Molineux talks about the advantages of being a left-handed all-rounder and why she no longer bowls a wrong ’un.

Karen Middleton
An audit report covering Scott Morrison’s role in the New Zealand tourism office raises serious concerns over transparency and due process.The NZ auditor’s criticisms of Morrison are similar to some of those the Australian National Audit Office would make nine years later in its own report examining the management of Tourism Australia.

Charis Palmer
As the government pushes to legislate for control of energy prices, retailers blame poor policy for rising bills. Meanwhile, experts say, the market continues to be gamed by energy generators.

Ella Donald Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn developed a taste for the macabre at an early age, but she’s keen to dispel the myth that she is who she writes. She talks about her depictions of deeply disturbed and disturbing women and the release of her latest film project, Widows. “There’s a reason we’re fascinated with domestic-based murders. It allows us to talk about marriage and family and what goes on behind closed doors. It gives us a strange vocabulary and permission to talk about those things we wouldn’t otherwise.”

Dylan Voller
If we didn’t riot, if we didn’t bring attention to the situation that way, all of these abuses would still be hidden out of sight. No one would know what goes on in Don Dale. Ultimately, we need all youth detention centres shut down and resources and power given to Aboriginal community leaders to develop alternative programs and facilities based on country, to help children who are caught up in violence and trauma to heal.

Paul Bongiorno
The question dogging Scott Morrison as he rubs shoulders with world leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Port Moresby this weekend is how long he will remain a member of this exclusive club. By his own admission, the chances are slim. The accidental prime minister – catapulted into the job when a majority of the Liberal Party room 12 weeks ago preferred him over Peter Dutton – is failing miserably.

If you take out all the pages from The Sydney Morning Herald reporting on allegations of inappropriate touching there wouldn’t be enough newsprint to wrap a flounder. The latest revelation is that while the ABC board was at Billy Kwong’s, tucking into the saltbush cakes and crispy skin duck with Davidson’s plums, the then managing director’s back allegedly got rubbed, ickily. Litigation regarding this sort of thing is rampant.

The euphemism in the documents calls the grants “departmental approaches”. Everywhere else in Indigenous affairs, the money has to be begged; here, it is given freely. Possibly because here it can be used to fight Indigenous interests. By Nigel Scullion’s own admission, the money was for “legal fees, effectively … to put forward a case of detriment to the land commissioner”. That is, to object to native title claims.

Celina Ribeiro
The NSW government’s plan to make it easier to adopt children in out-of-home care has been criticised for not allowing sufficient time for parents to restore their families and for potentially creating a new Stolen Generation.

Hamish McDonald
Scott Morrison and Xi Jinping take on international diplomacy in the Pacific. Beijing boosting regional security, not military. South-west Pacific in political turmoil. ‘Soft power’ review under way as case made for Radio Australia’s return.

Sophie Quick
At the KidZania labour-themed fun park in Singapore, children earn pretend money working pretend jobs as insurance agents or pharmacists, while their parents stand in depressingly familiar queues.

Richard Cooke
As she competes in the ICC Women’s World Twenty20, Australian cricketer Sophie Molineux talks about the advantages of being a left-handed all-rounder and why she no longer bowls a wrong ’un.